Praise, The Password of the Believer
BIBLE READING: PSALMS 100
“You can pass through His open gates with the password of praise. Come right into His presence with thanksgiving. Come bring your thank offering to Him and affectionately bless His beautiful name!” Psalms 100:4 (TPT)
WELCOME TO THE MONTH OF AUGUST
The first thing I want you to do is stop right now and shout 8 HALLELUJAHS!!!!!!! to our Abba Father, the Creator of the Universe and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. ALL GLORY BE TO GOD!!!!!
I want you to take time out today after reading this message to repeat the 8 shouts of HALLELUJAH, but before each shout you are going to think of 3 things God has done for you from January to date that you are grateful for. By the end of the day, you would have thought of 24 reasons why you are giving thanks to God for bringing you safely to the month of August.
The Holy Spirit took me to Psalms 100last week and as I read it, I knew God was trying to call my attention to something. Psalms 100:4 (TPT)says, “You can pass through His open gates with the PASSWORD OF PRAISE. Come right into His presence with thanksgiving. Come bring your thank offering to Him and affectionately bless His beautiful name!”immediately after I read this verse it was impressed on my spirit, God is asking for praise this month of August. He is asking for the kind of praise I had never done before, one in which I will daily give him praise with deliberate reasons for doing so. I have made up my mind that every evening, before I go to bed in this month of August I will write down 3 reasons why I am giving Him thanks that day and then go into a time of Praise and Worship to Him. My prayer for myself is that by the 31stof August, keeping a PRAISE JOURNAL will become a habit and intentionally counting by blessings each day and giving God a song of praise will become part of my routine before going to bed.
The second thing I learnt by looking at this verse more closely was that PRAISE is the password to open heavens for the Believer. I have always known this but as I read it again last week, it was as if a light bulb came on in me and I felt the Holy Spirit saying to me, “now you must intentionally put this into practise. Every time you praise God, you are taken right into His presence so remember to ask for His will (blessings, favour, wisdom, abundance etc) to be done in your life as He has ordained in heaven.” It was a rhema moment for me. We know a lot of things and we believe them but that does not mean we put them into practise all the time. I know Praise opens the doors of heaven, but I cannot say when I praise God, I remember I am opening the doors of heaven over my life. I praise God because I know He deserves all my praise and because of His loving kindness. I praise Him to thank Him not because I think the gates of heaven will be opened onto me. But the Holy Spirit is now calling my attention to the fact that when I praise God I should remember I am also calling for His will and purpose for my life down here on earth to be revealed. I must begin to deliberately remember that as I praise and thank Him for Who He is and what He has done for me, I am also opening the gates of heaven for His kingdom to come down on earth as it is in heaven. I must remember the many benefits accrued to me while I praise, it is what I believe that will come to pass. It is like going to a supermarket and you forget you can buy your toiletries as well so you get only groceries and go back home. Then you remember when you get home and go back again to get toiletries and forget you can visit the pharmacist in the store to get your prescription filled. Then you go back again to see the pharmacist; meanwhile you could have done all your shopping at once if only you remembered.
I don’t know about you but I believe the Holy Spirit is trying to teach me “I can kill so many birds with one stone” when I use the password of Praise, if only I remember all the “birds I can kill”. I hope you will join me to give God intentional praise this month in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Start a Praise Journal this month (write down at least 3 reasons daily for saying thank You to God that day) and remember, as you thank Him with your praise, you also have the opportunity to call His kingdom to come and His will to be done in your life as you face another new day in the mighty name of Jesus Christ Amen.
May this new month bring with it, testimonies of God’s will and purpose being accomplished in our lives and may we experience a deeper intimacy with Him through the Holy Spirit in the mighty name of Jesus Christ Amen.
UNDER GRACE UNDER MERCY